Visit to the Creation Museum, Part 1

As I mentioned before, various folks associated with the Panda’s Thumb and Scienceblogs showed up on the doorstep of the Answers in Genesis “Creation Museum” yesterday to take the tour.

Here’s the imposing facade. Mind you, this concave surface of glass is oriented to the south, which means that in the summertime the heat out on that plaza gets to be something fierce. I think it is obvious that people aren’t supposed to hang around outside, they are supposed to head right on in.

Once one has bought a ticket, the lobby area looms. To the left is the “Dragon’s Lair” bookstore, which sells a bewildering array of DVD videos in addition to the usual books. Ahead are the start of exhibits, where on the left side is a diorama that is a bit odd, to say the least. There is a large aquarium with freshwater fish and turtles, while along the “riverbank” there are animatronic dinosaurs and children. While AiG advances the notion that carnivory did not begin until after the Fall of Adam, one would think that by the time there were children not specifically identified in the bible that carnivory would be an issue. As I pointed out to Kay Hoppe at one point, expecting consistency will lead to disappointment. Off to the right, there is “Noah’s Cafe” and the entryway to the rest of the museum, and also to the special effects theater showing “Men in White”.

While AiG advances the notion that carnivory did not begin until after the Fall of Adam, one would think that by the time there were children not specifically identified in the bible that carnivory would be an issue. As I pointed out to Kay Hoppe at one point, expecting consistency will lead to disappointment.

The Bible says that carnivory began with the flood, not the fall. Genesis 9:3

No, that’s the point at which you interpret the bible to say that carnivory started. That would correspond to AiG’s stance.

Genesis 3:14 says that the serpent is cursed above livestock and wild animals. Genesis 4:2 introduces Abel as someone who kept flocks. Genesis 4:4 has Abel sacrificing “fat portions” of the firstborn of his flock. There’s not much point in “keeping” livestock that is at no risk of predation. You also don’t develop knowledge of butchery of livestock if all you raise them for is milk, wool, and other such by-products.

God’s instructions to Noah refer to different numbers to be taken of clean and unclean animals, a distinction that concerns dietary law. Genesis 9:3 is,

Everything that lives and moves will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything.

“You” refers to Noah and his surviving band of humans. Nothing there about what the animals are getting up to, or had already been up to for some time.

So, if one is taking cues about the onset of animal carnivory from the bible, one can either choose to pretend that discussion of what the humans are charged with applies to the rest of the animal kingdom, in which case the reference to “livestock” and “clean” animals already implies that they were meat pre-Flood, or you can claim that what humans are charged with doing does not apply to what the rest of the animals did, in which case there isn’t a convenient bible verse handy to tell you about the onset of carnivory, and the choice of when to say it started is completely arbitrary, and in AiG’s case, self-serving. Check out the perch carnivory fossil conundrum; there you have Ken Ham of AiG saying that the event that preserved the fossil of predation caught in the act is “consistent with” the Noachic Flood, yet it would show that carnivory did not hold off until after the Flood if that fossil was laid down during the Flood. The display at the AiG museum presenting that fossil is, predictably, far more wishy-washy in what it says. They try to imply that this fossil was due to post-Flood catastrophism, yet it seriously undercuts various other of their claims if the Flood is *not* responsible for pretty much the whole of the fossil record.